EVE General Discussion

EVE is 12 years old now. As far as MMOs are concerned, the community is sailing through uncharted waters, because any other active MMO of comparable age is basically PvE. Back in EVE's dim, distant pre-cambrian era, any batshit insane organisational model and leadership could find itself a niche in the game's ecology. Now the game is densely populated with people who can

(1) Fly just about any ship with any weapon
(2) Have seen what happens when those batshit orgs and dumbkopf leaders run things
(3) Join orgs that are very well co-ordinated and run by people who know what the **** they're doing.

Natural result: most of EVE's ecological niches are filled with damb great tyrannosaurs, and the ones that aren't are infested with velociraptors. No room for small furry creatures to emerge in the daylight. Meaning that any new entrants into the environment are going to have to evolve right through 12 years of learning and progress before they're going to be competitive. There only only two general classes of outcomes to this situation:

i) CCP hit us with a giant meteor - a set of game changes so overwhelming that nearly all the accumulated doctrines, assets, knowledge and skill becomes useless. Basically they'd have to change EVE into EVE II, but you could interpret fozziesov as an attempt to break up the 0.0 meta in this way.

ii) The only hope for any substantial change on the map comes from when an existing organisation dies and the component parts bud off to form one of more new entities. hopefully hoovering up some starry-eyed newbies while they do so.

Class (i) outcomes naturally alienate a lot of whiny entitled veteran players

Class (ii) outcomes naturally alienate a lot of whiny entitled new players

CCP meet Rock and his friend Hard Place. You'll be spending the rest of EVE's existence in the company of these two.

Nicely put, Malcanis. +1 like from me (no kidding).

EVE is effectively a gerontocracy, where the old farts prevent the development of new blood since that would threaten their special interests and their position. Also since CCP began applying "customer oriented design" they've trapped themselves in a conservative stance of doing again what the old farts liked in the past and dismiss what wasn't even attempted, let alone go out and look for different customers (someday I'll share a story about that).

So yes, apparently either CCP burns the retirement house or a plague sweeps the ranks and leaves plenty of new room for newcomers...

...but I dissent. Since there is a third way.

iii) CCP acknowledges that their sandbox haves unexploited niches and opens them in ways which force everyone to be a rookie. Those empty niches are unlike anything seen before, and previous experience serves nothing. Some of the dinosaurs will take that road. Some of the flurry creatures will take it too.

Avatars are a unexploited niche.
NPCs are another unexploited niche.
Even ride-of-the-month is a unexploited niche (if you're desperate enough).

There is always a way out from a 2D plane... shall you take my hand and give it a try?

"NPCs" - enjoyable and engaging PvE might be more doable. CCP have shown extremely limited ability to produce fun PvE, but at least they would if they could.

2 Years ago it was announced we were getting the ability to build stargates which would open into some new space, "new space" implying there was something different about it rather than just "more nullsec". It''s exactly the sort of high stakes, high risk, mega infrastructure project that you could get large old groups gambling their massive isk and asset wealth into, with the real risk it could all go ****-up and bankrupt or implode them if handled wrongly, and provide actual conflict-over-something-of-value instead of third-partying-and-farming-for-the-gf's. In return for some sort of bigger reward you could find in current space obv.

They released some ghost exploration sites and ascendency implants which were supposed to have something to do with the gate construction.

2 years on and the ghosts and ascendancies are pretty much all there is to show for it.

In the immediate aftermath of Incarnagate, CCP someone-or-other mentioned that there were a bunch of unreleased items. I strongly suspect, even if I can't prove, that most or probably all of the trickle of t-shirts we've seen since then are those very same assets, conveniently re-labelled. How many remain is a subject for speculation.

I noticed that PLEX trading volume at Jita are mirroring the PCU values shown on EVE-Offline. At the same time, the PLEX is going up in cost. This means; if the reason for fewer people on-line is due to fewer subs, then those leaving are not those who buy PLEX, but those who create and sell PLEX. Thus, its not the multiboxers who are leaving, or those with armies of cyno alts. Its people who are willing to spend cash on PLEX.

Seriously? I was under the impression that the development schedule of the Rubicon plan was to last until late 2016 since it was a three years development plan starting with the Winter expansion of 2013. So according to my impression, CCP is on schedule with their plan.

A different matter is that the Rubicon Plan was already late when it was incepted. Sovereignty needed a replacement to be released in 2013, and at the current pace it is dubious how many people will be left to take on Apochrypha 2.0 once it comes to fruition 16 months from now.

Fozziesov is Summer 2015 expansion.
The first new structures are Winter 2015 expansion.
New space and second wave of new structures will be implemented by Summer 2016.
The full implementation of the Rubicon plan will be in Winter 2016.

Who's gonna be left playing by then? Who's gonna be loggin in, and why?

This is how i see it, correct me if i´m wrong:

Must be very complex isue for CCP too to keep the balance in isk created in game and PLEX´s sold out of the game...

Majority aims to PLEX their accounts (not everybody has spare money, especially if they do not love EvE so much that other non-subscription game would not do instead of it), and simply might stop doing so if even hard work (read grind) is not enough.

Then there are those who buy PLEX´s and sell them, if they drop out (or stop buying PLEX´s into game) in bigger numbers than PLEX-consumers do, result is higher PLEX price and more "account plexers" again might drop out.

Then again if EvE has at some point left more people selling PLEX than buying them, PLEX price will drop and less of them will be intrested to purchase and sell them, so price again bounces up (again dropping some others who can´t afford to pay with RL money+ and/or have no time or have other kind of problems making isk, believe me there are plenty)....

And so it goes on, like a dance between 2 very close stars, another sucking life from other...

Close Arthur but not quite.
"The rest of the game" is actually getting some new content - Drifters - which could bring some interesting stuff to the surface. It does need a little balancing so you don't "need" a 30 man fleet to travel through numerous wormholes and 5 or 6 locked gates just to get to the action, which if done right can be completed by a single player (the other 29 are fodder for the sleepers along the way). Drifters are interesting as long as you can handle the boring parts of them.

Sov, is getting a lot of resources put into it, just not in the right balance. Eve is supposed to be a sandbox (tactics, unknowns, strategy) but when it comes to sov, it is being redesigned and pretty much resembles, a one size fits all rack of tracksuits.
I'm actually sorry I joined Duality for the "testing" of the new mechanics, as it confirmed my worst thoughts about Fozziesov.

CCP is making an effort across the board to renew interest in Eve, they just need to become a little more open minded in their approach. If that happened, it could cause a real upset and see - Dedicated Highsec players venturing out and chasing down the Drifter threat inside wormholes - Sov wars that actually encourage real conflict (not "camp the undock, wave wand") for everyone in nulsec.

-- - -- - -- - -- - --
Fleet warp changes.
Changes to how fleets operate too is just not complete, it favors a fighting style (preferred by certain groups) that is not engaging and makes engaging those doctrines more difficult.
Slippery Petes, are a perceived problem and the fleet warp changes do nothing to address this, aside from allowing them to be refit without all the ECCM that will no longer necessary.

CCP again has taken something that needed balancing and completely changed it to something worse. Adding more layers of complexity "is not balance". Like the Ishtar, Devs took a perceived problem and changed it without doing anything to alter the problem.
Devs can change whatever they like but if the change doesn't address the problem it is pointless. The single best way to reduce player action and interaction is introducing change that is biased toward creating less conflict (making it harder to catch your enemy).

Worm Holes -> ISK -> PLEX -> train all three characters on the same account for different fleets and roles.
Multiple trained accounts is 3x multiplier on skills while paying for one account.

Furry little Brave?

I am glad to see you think that new players need an area to grow.

Hmmm .... CCP could make a perma-death constellation, where your SP increases rapidly but you need to take a one way jump to Empire at some point, no cloaks, no SP gains in stations or while offline.